Jeff Barto, Trust Strategist at Symantec, who I interviewed at the eTail Canada conference a few weeks back. We discuss how a simple security seal isn’t enough to build confidence in your potential customers, and what else you need to do.

Tips for Getting Attention in a Noisy World

Diana discusses an experiment in which they tested peoples’ memory of a video. One group was told that they could take a picture during the video if they wanted. Turned out that those who snapped a picture remembered less of what they’d seen! The act of taking a photo switches your attention away from the content of what you are seeing and/or hearing.

Other interesting findings for marketers from neuroscience:

Printed direct mail has more of an impact on memory than digital!

So if you can afford it, use a combination of digital and print promotional materials and ad campaigns.

Getting your target’s face and name in the marketing pieces massively increases open rates

But if you have a face and a picture of your product side-by-side you’ll end up drawing attention AWAY from your product and to the face. One exception to this is if you have the face looking at your product. From an evolutionary perspective, it’s not surprising that we want to see what another near us is looking at: it might be something dangerous!

Trust is More Than Just a Security Seal

Jeff Barto, Trust Strategist at Symantec

(If you want to skip straight to this one, it starts at minute 12:26 in the show.)

Jeff advises that you “think trust from the very beginning”. There are two elements to building trust from a security perpsective:

Validation (Is this site legitimate?)

Encryption (Is my data safe?

When looking for a security provider for your website, make sure you have both those bases covered.

Other Tips for Building Trust

Avoid the NASCAR look: don’t clog up your website with a whole bunch of trust and security seals. Better to have only one or two truly reputable ones.

Try to avoid sending users to another site to pay. If you have to, try to make it look consistent with your site.

The seal should be clickable and lead to explanations of what you’ve done to ensure the security of the site.

Tema Frank has been helping businesses and organizations market themselves more effectively on the Internet since the late 1990s. In 2001 she founded Web Mystery Shoppers Inc., one of the world's first remote usability testing companies, and one of the very few to do large-sample size usability testing.

In 2012 she launched the Frank Online Marketing Show, a weekly podcast devoted to helping Canadian companies become more successful online.

She has taught e-marketing at the University of Alberta and the Université de Pau et des Pays de l'Adour (in France), given seminars and workshops on the topic, and written about how the internet can help businesses sell more and communicate better.

She is also the author of the best-selling book, "Canada's Best Employers for Women: A guide for job-hunters, employees and employers."